In the early stages of AP evolution, much attention is spent learning new things. Many APs are eager to be taught “secret” plays and techniques, and to needlessly complicate plays that they haven’t yet mastered. How many forum posts have you read from novice card counters wondering if they should “upgrade” to a level-two counting system or complex side counts?

This is natural at the early stages, but as you accumulate skill and experience, you’ll find that there’s much more value in recognizing your own strengths and weaknesses, and tailoring your approach to them.

Of course, this gives you the opportunity to improve. If you can count down a six-deck shoe in a minute-twenty but you can’t recall the correct index for A8 vs. 4, then you know what you need to work on.

More importantly, knowing and being honest about your weaknesses helps to keep you from getting into marginal spots that can prove to be very costly. You’ve heard the expression that someone knows just enough about something to get into trouble. This applies extra to APs!

No matter how strong you think your game is, mistakes can prove to be a massive problem. An overestimation of your own skills will produce mistakes, which typically both lower your edge and increase your variance—two things we work very hard to avoid in most cases.

A lot of this comes down to ego. I see it especially in cases involving team play, where one player wants to impress the other with their apparent skill, but it’s also common amongst ambitious solo players, many of whom seem to be perpetually “below EV.”

If you think you have something to prove to yourself or to others, I’d suggest re-evaluating your objectives. The most impressive APs, in my opinion, are the ones who have gone in and got the money, over and over again, no matter how simple the means. They don’t need to put on a show because that’s not what they’re in business to do.

It’s neat hearing about unusual, niche plays that are completely outside the box, but these don’t always correlate with long-term success. In fact, some of the more obscure plays I’ve learned about came courtesy of players who also have a tendency to get in over their heads, playing under conditions that even more skilled players would pass on, and perpetually overbetting in high-variance, low-edge situations.

These guys fancy themselves to be really high-end APs: always on top of new plays, and always mixed up in stuff that seems brilliant on the surface. But their determination to outdo themselves is dangerous, and their willingness to gamble in marginal spots can be a liability if they work as part of a team.

If you know your weaknesses and are honest with yourself, you can avoid these kind of problems. But there’s another side to the coin, and that’s playing to your strengths.

It’s tempting to get wrapped up in new, sexy plays, but if you’re really good at a particular play, don’t be afraid to specialize for a bit. Avoiding becoming a one-trick pony is a good idea, but getting involved in a series of plays less valuable than the one you specialize in just because you feel compelled to diversify is generally not good policy.

Having bread-and-butter plays that you devote the majority of your time to will make things a lot easier. You can always work on new stuff, too, but you may find it more reasonable to spend 20% of your time on it, instead of 50%. Don’t give up too much value just because you’re afraid of specializing.

Prioritize the stuff you’re good at, and work on your weaknesses in your downtime, not at the tables. The money will be steadier, the work less stressful, and the end result a more solid AP foundation. As in many other ventures in life, checking your ego at the door will pay off in the long run.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

I gamble against casinos for a living. This means I make paychecks from places that never hired me. Instead, most of them want to fire me permanently and ban me from ever setting foot in their building again. It’s kind of funny to think about it that way, but that’s essentially how it is. I am forcing places to provide me employment unwillingly.

I wrote the following trip report nine months ago while “on the job.”

Sept 9 2016

I left my house at 10am after three nights back home from my last trip (a Labor Day weekend trip with one other player in which we earned $20k in estimated EV. Our actual results were about breakeven after expenses.). I had an 11:40am flight with a team member, who I will call C. We met two other players on site: S and L. After a four-hour flight, I landed, got a rental car, drove a couple hours, and by 7:30pm Pacific I was in a casino 2000 miles from my house. I found a nice opportunity right away but decided that the edge was only about 1-2%. I knew there were better opportunities in the area and wanted to pick my spots wisely, so I decided to pass and instead discuss the game plan for the next couple days with my trip team members at a crappy local bar within walking distance from our accommodations.

I say trip team members since I don’t work with a team on a regular basis. I never have—instead I have a handful of people I work with, some more than others. It really varies depending on what is needed for the particular play, game limits, availability, how heated up anyone is at the casino or region in question, and a couple other factors. So instead of playing this shift, it was a couple beers, some bar top trivia, and a plan to split up the next morning and start scouting around 11am.

Sept 10

There are a handful of casinos in this region so we split up, having three different rental cars between us. C ended up empty handed; L and S were still looking around. I found a great opportunity in which we could do exactly what we came to the region for: high-EV play that requires all four of us to play together.This play is very hard for casinos to pick off.

Last time I played this casino (an unsophisticated low-roller dump) we had a good result (around +20 units of two hands of the table max) and although the casino was definitely not happy they had no idea what was going on and we left unscathed. The group I played with last time had a great act, which helps a good deal at these places.

The current group also had a good act to go with our skills, so I liked our chances of pulling it off. However, I didn’t like our chances of getting four seats during such a busy weekend—this was the lowest minimum game in the casino with relatively few hands dealt per hour, so people take a lot longer to tap out. Plus, the limit wasn’t as high as we remembered.

Luckily, in the meantime, L found a ridiculous procedural error that was too good to pass up, about an hour up the road. Right as I was weighing my options he called me and gave me the scoop. We came up with a course of action and I relayed it to our BP for this trip, S. We were a little skeptical that this would still be going on even by the time S got there as it seemed ridiculous the casino would allow such a thing to go unnoticed, but it did.

By 3pm, L and S were in action earning roughly $4-5k an hour in EV for our four-person team while C and I were off until swing shift. The session was uneventful heat-wise and had swings from +$14k to -$7k, with them ending at -$2.5k for roughly $20k in EV. I was happiest about the fact that they were able to get the action in and the casino seemed to accept our BP as some guy who happened to be passing through BFE with a pocket full of money, along with the fact that no one seemed to notice the error that allowed for the opportunity in the first place.

We decided to leave the BP there and send C over to switch things up on swing shift. In the meantime, I would look for a few things L and I could do together in the other casinos of the region. Unfortunately, I once again came up short aside from some marginal edges that we sampled and passed on.

C and S got to work on swing shift, exploiting the same procedural error that popped up on day shift. They noticed another crew lurking around as well, but luckily they weren’t interested in what we were doing, so C and S had the game to themselves. I heard later that the other crew were wondering what we were doing and questioned if we had an edge, which is good news to me.

C and S were both feeling the heat on swing shift with S getting his own personal pit boss as well as multiple “we know what you’re doing, if you’re doing anything” stares. Nothing serious happened, so they decided to play through the heat. The edge wasn’t as high as earlier in the day due to a couple of factors, but by the time they quit they had picked up another $5k or so in EV and $6.5k in actual money. With the money lost during day shift and an additional $1.5k lost by L and I during our swing shift scouting earlier in the evening, we were ahead $2.5k for the trip. We hadn’t even covered trip costs yet and were about 20 G’s below EV. Time to sleep.

Sept 11

New plan. We had a strong suspicion that the error from yesterday would still be around today, as this casino was not paying close attention and likely wouldn’t fix it. The game we wanted opened at noon, so I woke up and got to the casino around 11am (early for me in this time zone) to grab some coffee, game plan, and make sure the game was still on. C, L, and S would sleep in a little, with C and L scouting the other casinos and S coming to me once I verified that everything was going according to plan.

We were definitely in business, so I took a seat. All was good except for one small yet important detail: a group of four friends were occupying all the seats at the table except mine! Although I was ready for S to come in and start making some money, he couldn’t get a seat. These guys and girls were up for their morning/afternoon beers and really wanted to play this game. Not only did they want to play, but they wanted to play incredibly slow.

Finally, a couple of them tapped out. S came in and we got in about 1.5 hours of super slow play, winning $2k with maybe $5k in EV earned. I lost around $1200 just signaling and betting 1/10 of what S was betting before a pit boss finally noticed the error and put a stop to it. They didn’t do anything to us as they didn’t put us together and weren’t even sure we were taking advantage of the error in the first place.

S got a buffet comp, I lost my remaining chips on the table by going “all in” and losing, so I left to go scout the other casinos for swing shift. Nothing was worth playing on swing, I lost some more money scouting, and we ended the trip that night -$640 for the team after trip costs. After a handful of small scouting losses, the actual table win was $2340, and our EV estimate was around $30k.

I personally earned roughly $17,500 in EV In the last 10 days for a net loss of a few hundred bucks due to trip costs. Tough way to make a living.

We often sneer at casino ineptitude, eager to point out amongst ourselves instances in which casinos took excessive, misdirected, or just plain absurd actions as a response to suspected advantage play. Sometimes it’s a way to add some levity to a sometimes grueling and frequently stressful occupation, and sometimes it’s legitimate outrage at abusive casino behavior (e.g., aggressive and physical barrings, backroomings, etc.).

As Lee pointed out in “Milk or Toast?”, casino ineptitude is not always a bad thing. In one example, he mentions a pit boss pretending to count down a deck on a game where card counting is not occurring, giving Lee an effective green light to continue playing. We poke fun at scenarios like this, but of course, this is far preferable to a sharp pit boss who can nail esoteric plays with accuracy and efficiency.

So, we generally don’t celebrate casino enlightenment, but as with all things AP, there are exceptions. Sometimes casinos do it right, and even we can give them credit for that. We can also use “correct” casino behaviors as a useful barometer to make more accurate assessments of a particular play.

A simple example involves procedural errors. In the old days, dealers making consistent yet correctable procedural errors that were subsequently exploited by advantage players resulted in dealers being fired, often for being “unlucky.” While there are still some examples of such ridiculous behavior, most casinos now go the route of identifying and fixing the leak, rather than place the blame on superstition like the unluckiness of a particular dealer.

A while back, I played frequently in a casino that believed that certain dealers were unlucky. I didn’t always play with the “unlucky” dealers, but I knew that such unenlightened attitude on a management level was effectively a free pass to go wild. Turns out the whole casino was “unlucky.”

Then there was a casino that had some rookie dealers who were making frequent, profitable mistakes. A casual observer wouldn’t easily pick up on these, but the mistakes were there, nonetheless. I didn’t play long before a pit boss came over, calmly explained the nature of the mistakes to this particular dealer, and went back to the conversation she was having on the other side of the pit.

In this case, I’ve got to give these folks some respect. Not only did this boss quickly and accurately pick off a subtle procedural quirk, but she did so without pulling her her out and having panicked conversations with surveillance while a group of security staff fumbled around nearby. They just fixed the problem. Message received; they won’t see me again any time soon.

Finally, there’s the case of backoffs and barrings. While most casinos now recognize that the best way to bar APs is to politely ask them to leave and not come back, some still do things like forcibly backroom players, get physical during the barring process, verbally abuse players, and so on. Not only are these places setting themselves up for an expensive and completely avoidable lawsuit, they’re also showing their hand.

I give much more respect to casinos that handle game protection calmly and efficiently than I do to places that curse at players, have security that shove them around, and that think that handcuffing players for using their brains at the table is a reasonable countermeasure. Casinos in the latter category are all but guaranteed to be punished by APs.

Often, clueless casinos can are our bread and butter. They provide us with both profit and laughs at their expense. But it’s also important to recognize and respect instances of casinos doing things right, whether it ultimately leads us to avoid a place entirely, adjust our approach, or simply be able to play with the knowledge that we probably won’t get beat up when the hammer comes down. That’s good for business, both for us and for them.

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re in a similar position to mine years ago. You may have learned to count cards, browse some blackjack forums, and maybe even spread a little at your local casino. But you’ve never taken the plunge into full time play, or moved up to higher stakes that yield a respectable profit. I was in that state for years before I actually became a profitable advantage player, so I thought it might be interesting to share my story with people who are now where I was then.

I hope you like it.

Like most APs, I started as a card counter. This was a result of a trip to a card room in Washington when I was 18. I had no idea what blackjack was other than the fact that it had something to do with 21. I lost $60 (likely playing horribly), but I was interested in learning more so I decided to look into winning at blackjack. I came across a website that talked about card counting.

That summer, I was able to learn the hi-lo count fairly quickly, and I had basic strategy down cold, but I never learned anything about EV, ROR, BR requirements, N0, or anything else of that nature. I did learn enough to know that I didn’t have enough money to make it worth my time, though. I would take occasional trips with friends, keeping the count and playing basic, and I would simply bet more than minimum when the count was high, with no defined spread or plan. Unfortunately, I was too green to realize the value of the games I was playing at the time, and I didn’t like the thought of risking the small amount of money I had for a small expected hourly profit, so I never really made any money off of them.

Life went on, and I’m sure I went through stretches of a year or two without even playing blackjack or visiting a casino, as I never had enough of a bankroll to make an acceptable hourly profit and had other priorities at the time. My life went in a different direction, and I started and operated a successful business throughout my 20’s, but I was getting burned out. After a lot of personal debate, and now being at a point where I felt I had enough money to make blackjack advantage play worth my time, I decided to put my business on hold and see if I could actually make some real money playing blackjack.

The thought of walking the Vegas Strip while getting paid, and traveling the world while pulling one over on the casinos was a daydream of mine. I wanted to see if it was possible. I never liked visiting casinos for fun, and I never gambled recreationally; my interest was mainly out of curiosity, boredom, and burn out at work. After years of being tied down with business obligations and girlfriends who wouldn’t understand the travel involved, I found myself single, with a reasonable money cushion, and I had just finished up my last “real job” project, with no plans to take on another. It was time.

At this point I had never met anyone who played blackjack or other casino games professionally, and, to be honest, I still wasn’t sure if blackjack was beatable because I hadn’t done much studying beyond the basics of counting. Still, I was lucky to have enough money to learn on my own, time to do it, and some great games to choose from nearby. I studied up a lot more. I came up with a bet spread, EV estimate, and a game plan.

Although I could technically afford more, I decided to start with a spread of $25–$200 on some generously-cut double deck games with very good speed and late surrender. I’m sure I made some mistakes along the way, but the games were strong and my spread was decent for the game strength, I would even wong out regularly, so my hourly EV probably wasn’t too bad. Still, after about two months of playing regularly, I was stuck $8000, plus expenses, not to mention the fact that I was out two months of money it took to support my lifestyle, as I had a house payment and other expenses not related to gambling. Nice start!

Starting off losing only motivated me even more. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue or if I wanted to go back to my “real job” but I was definitely sure I wasn’t stopping until I at least got my $8000 back, because I wasn’t going out a loser. The game I was playing was better than almost anything else I could find, and it was driving distance from my house. I was determined to make it. That’s when I got backed off of the DD game. I wasn’t technically even backed off (they must have liked me); instead they just told all the dealers to give me horrible cuts. Effectively, that game was dead to me.

Instead of playing the worse games in the Pacific Northwest, I decided to schedule my first AP travel trip. I was still stuck about the same amount and wanted to turn a small profit before throwing in the towel. According to Stanford Wong’s Casino Blackjack Newsletter, most of the games I could afford to play in Vegas were shoe games. At the time there were some decent shoe games in Vegas, even S17 LS tables on the main floors of some casinos. I had plans to wong out during bad counts and wong in on some good counts when I could, but when I crunched the numbers I learned that I needed to spread to two hands, increasing my max bets to 2x$200 to get an hourly rate similar to what I enjoyed on the game I started on.

So I was off to Vegas for 10 days, staying wherever was cheap and playing rated in my real name to get comps to help with expenses (I didn’t know any better at the time). This trip is when I finally turned things around, putting my card counting career results into the black. I was a profitable card counter. I don’t remember exactly how much I won, but it was in the low five-figures (probably $13–14K). The win was way over EV for that trip, but I was hooked. I continued that year counting, slowly upping my max bet as I gained more confidence and experience, including many backoffs along the way.

After a number of trips cut short due to heat, backoffs, and 86’ings, I decided that I needed to make counting a low priority and look into other AP methods. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was already databased due to the mistake of using my real name while counting. I still make many mistakes and will continue to along the way, but I see them as learning experiences. At that time I still hadn’t met another AP, but in my path to find higher EV in less transparent opportunities, I ended up meeting some like-minded players that made AP even more profitable and enjoyable for me. I haven’t looked back since my first trip to Vegas.

I will never forget attending Max Rubin’s Blackjack Ball for the first time last year and winning the Grosjean Cup in a head-to-head counting battle with John Chang, the former head of the infamous M.I.T. blackjack team. It remains the highlight of my career to date and I honestly never thought I would get this far when I started out. I now enjoy freedom to do what I want, have a very understanding and beautiful girlfriend at home, and make a healthy income off of AP. I also have a lot of good friends and associates that I met along the way. For those of you daydreaming, whether it’s about a career as an AP, or something else, my advice is to go for it! You only live once, what’s the worst that can happen?

If you were going into business in the traditional sense, you would hopefully research your target demographic and see what they’re buying, so to speak. In order to reach your potential customers most effectively, you have to give them what they want, in a way that ideally isn’t too different than what they’re accustomed to.

As an advantage player, your customers are casinos. You’re selling them a false narrative (that you’re a legitimate gambler), and you can most effectively do this by presenting this narrative in a way that they recognize and are comfortable with.

A couple of months ago, I took a look at a few of the common AP tells (“Don’t Look Like an AP“), in an effort to shine a light on some of the ways that APs give themselves away to the astute observer. Now, let’s take a more active approach and intentionally adopt the mannerisms and behaviors of the gamblers you’re trying to blend in with.

The first thing to take into consideration is that gamblers aren’t the same in all parts of the world, or across different levels of play. A high-stakes gambler in Macau is usually going to appear very unlike a high-stakes gambler in Atlantic City. The average red-chipper in a tourist town like Vegas would probably look a little out of place in the middle of Iowa.

When doing your market research, spend some time observing gamblers playing similar stakes to you in the region you’re playing in. How do they dress? How do they interact with the dealers, pit crew, and cocktail staff? How do they carry themselves at the table, and what is their interaction with other gamblers like? What are their betting tendencies? Look at hands, body language, and facial expressions. Listen in on some conversations.

I once played at an unfamiliar casino in a somewhat rural locale. Since I planned to play on the main floor, I took a stroll around the tables and noticed that a big chunk of the players were drinking a specific type of beer that was served in a fairly unusual way (sorry, you’ll have to use your imagination). I also took note of how many people wore baseball hats, whether or not people wore jackets or coats in the casino (it was warm outside but cold inside), and how the players interacted with the dealers and each other. When I came back to play, I like to think that I blended in reasonably well.

Another time, I played in a casino where I anticipated some high-stakes action. There were plenty of high rollers to observe, so I spent some time in the high limit room to get a sense of the high-stakes vibe at this particular property. I found that the big players here tended to dress extremely casually, blending in with the lower-stakes gamblers on the main floor. If I didn’t know any better, I might have showed up with a more upscale look, but instead, I kept it casual and fit right in.

Spend a little time doing your homework before you play, and you can avoid being the green-chipper in an off-strip local’s joint wearing a suit and setting off alarms before you even sit down to play. Instead, you’ll sell the casino exactly what they’re in the market for. And that’s just plain good business.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

I recently received an email from an AP friend: “Something I’d like to hear your thoughts on is when to burn a game out and when to go for longevity. It seems like every time I burn a game, I regret it and every time I try to milk a game, I regret it.”

Hindsight is always 20/20 in these situations. Opinions can and will differ on this topic, but here’s the checklist I use when determining if I want to milk or kill a game. Weighing these factors is how I decide which option is the better one.

Tolerance: If a casino has a high tolerance, it is better for milking. A low-four figure session could go relatively unnoticed in a big action joint, so milking an opportunity there has a lot more value than it might at a less tolerant casino, where only very small wins will go unnoticed. In the case of the small casino, milking may not justify multiple trips to and from the area.

Proximity: Obviously, milking an opportunity that is a pain to get to isn’t ideal, unless there’s a special circumstance in which I can milk my way to a huge monthly income and I am willing to relocate to do so. On the other hand, if I live in Vegas and there’s a great play I can walk to regularly, I may choose to milk it just because I like the “paycheck” and it doesn’t take a lot of work to get to and from the casino.

Type of Play: If I have a special play relatively few people know about, this may be a reason to milk it. If it’s something obvious I have to compete with other APs for, I will likely go for the kill instead. Typically, when I hear about so-and-so’s big win at casino ABC playing DEF, and I knew about the play and played it before so-and-so did, I regret not getting the big win myself.

Frequency of Opportunity: If there’s an opportunity I can find almost every day that offers a high edge, I would be more likely to consider milking. If I am looking for a more rare and infrequent opportunity, I would likely be more inclined to go for the kill once it appears.

Opportunity Cost of Not Being Welcome: If this casino has many different opportunities for me to make decent money, I am less likely to go for the big score kill on any one play. I consider the opportunity cost based on what I think will happen once I get the inevitable heave ho that comes with crushing a game. Is losing the casino next door going to cost me a lot when they flyer? Do they flyer to the casino next door?

Which Method Nets the Most Money!: This is simple, yet complicated. For example, what is your EV if you bring in a BP and try to crush an opportunity for one, two, or three nights in a row? Will this ensure that the opportunity will be toast? Would you make more money by playing with a different person betting for you every week? Will it last that long? These kinds of questions are impossible to answer entirely accurately, but it’s important to consider them when deciding whether you want to milk and opportunity, or kill it.

For purely selfish reasons, I’ve done as folks like us do, and I’ve made an EV evaluation of contributing to this site.

On one hand, the tips and tricks contained herein would undoubtedly smooth the learning curve for the up-and-comer, allowing newer APs to learn from our mistakes and soak up some of the finer points that have been learned through years of actual casino experience.

On the other hand, one could argue that this blog gives away “trade secrets,” or that it offers more value to lurking casino employees hoping to understand how APs operate than it does to the AP community, and even if the inverse is true, the fact remains that there is a finite amount of money to go around in most forms of AP, and the more successful APs that exist, the less money each one of them can expect to take home personally.

Lose-lose, right?

While I can’t speak for Lee—the creator of AP Street—directly, I know there’s a touch of altruism motivating his creation of the site. We’ve both leaned a lot from the players who have come before us, and there’s a certain sense of duty in doing the same for the next generation of APs.

But on a pragmatic level, it all comes down to whether or not spreading information and sharing insights that aren’t widely published elsewhere is +EV or not.

In the original version of this piece (I re-wrote a big chunk, for reasons that are probably obvious), I took a look at a particular game that was once a goldmine for APs but is now old hat to casino folks and beginner players alike. While this game still provides the occasional opportunity to observant APs, it’s often a poor proposition from an exposure standpoint. Simply put: casinos got wise.

What took this opportunity from goldmine to waste of time? Was it ever-increasing casino awareness? Sure, to some extent. Was it a major increase in the volume of players exploiting this particular opportunity? Yes, absolutely. But, in my opinion, the number one game killer was sloppiness on the part of players.

Poorly-prepared APs are high-exposure. They heat themselves up through sloppiness and a lack of self-awareness, and they heat up the games that they’re spotted on. Even if a casino doesn’t know a play, they’ll be able to pick off a shoddy AP, and now all eyes are on the game that more skilled players may have been quietly profiting from for years.

I’ll give some of these guys the benefit of the doubt. Some players come up on their own, and they don’t have anyone to help them smooth out their rough edges. They may have absolutely no idea that their play is riddled with red flags.

Writing about stuff that most APs avoid talking about openly is a tough call, but if it helps stop casino-smartening behaviors before they start, then it’s almost certainly a good thing. Weak APs being weeded out as a form of natural selection may seem good for the bottom line, but if those APs wise up an entire casino to a particular sensitivity in the process, then there’s more potential money disappearing than they were going to take in the first place.

So, part of my motivation is giving back to the community that’s given freely to me. But I won’t pretend that there’s nothing in it for me, either. Better APs, longer-lasting opportunities. I may be idealistic, but I can think of a few opportunities that have dried up that might still be around if the people responsible for drying them up had read some of the tips on this site beforehand. That’s why this stuff is important, and that’s what’s in it for me.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

Is it 20/20 vision? A dextrous hand? A mind like a steel trap, lightning-fast counting skills, and an act that could fool even the most jaded pit boss?

Nope. It’s a strong network.

As an AP who is not particularly talented in any specific aspect of advantage play, there’s no question that my lifetime earnings have been heavily influenced by the strength of my network. I think my more naturally-gifted colleagues would tell you the same about themselves. For any AP, a strong network is the best and most reliable source of cold, hard EV.

This isn’t about being a leech; in fact, it’s anything but. If you’re honest, make fair deals, are easy to work with, and do your best to contribute whenever possible, you’ll likely be blessed with a wide network of players willing to share information and work with you. It’s never a one-way street—players who treat it as one will soon find themselves at a dead end.

There are players out there who are very bright and are unquestionably able to beat games on their own but that are giant pains in the ass to work with—or worse, completely dishonest crooks—and so they’re often stuck working alone, or working exclusively with green APs who haven’t caught wind of their reputation yet.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the AP biz is extremely reputation-based. If you give other APs a raw deal, it won’t take long for other APs to find out. Aside from the immediate implications of being a total asshole, you’re also heavily stunting your earning ability.

For the shot-takers, liars, and all-around shady APs who conduct themselves in this manner, I have no particular advice. You’ll be out of business soon, anyway.

But there are a lot of APs who mean well and still find themselves battling a questionable reputation. You don’t want to be one of these guys. Prevention is the best medicine.

One of the biggest gripes I hear about other APs is that they’re difficult or unpleasant to work with. This can range from trying to change deals during a trip due to playing with scared money, to splitting hairs over literal pennies during chops. If you’re sweating a few extra bucks amongst a play worth thousands, rest assured there are a lot of other guys out there who are more easygoing and just as capable as you willing to take your spot.

I don’t mean to suggest that you should be willing to be walked on by other APs, but often, differences of opinion will arise when it comes to splitting expenses and things of that nature. I stay flexible in situations like these, and it’s no coincidence that the people I work with consistently do the same. We’re not out to game each other, and we know that.

That leads to my next point: always make clear deals. I’ve been in situations before where disputes have arisen over non-minor things, like jackpot payouts, missing chips, and chop percentages after a game has already been secured.

In these kind of cases, I’ve generally been willing to give both sides the benefit of the doubt. Given the character of the APs involved, I don’t think anyone was angling dishonestly, but a major dispute still occurred, sometimes requiring mediation by an unbiased third party. In some cases, these disputes have hurt working relationships between impeccably honest APs.

The solution is to cover all the bases before the start of a play, or a trip, or a partnership. Account for as many possibilities as you can. Plan for the unexpected.

What happens if a teammate loses a purple chip while walking to the casino? What happens if a teammate is robbed in the parking garage? What’s the deal if one teammate starts a trip a day early and another starts a day late but stays a day extra? If someone wins a drawing for a new car while playing a session as part of a team, how is that handled?

The answers will vary from player to player, so talk about them before they happen—hopefully the bad ones won’t—and make sure you’re on the same page. The more you plan for, the fewer potential surprises you need to worry about, and the less likely it will be that you’ll have a disagreement that could hurt your working relationship.

Your network with other APs is your strongest asset, and it will usually be more consistent and valuable than any cache of secret games or individual skills you’ll ever develop. Plan ahead, be flexible, don’t be a jerk, and keep building that network with your good name and your easy-to-work-with attitude.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

Imagine you are walking the Vegas strip with your buddies and stopping at casino bars along the way to have some $15 drinks. At your current stop you notice that the people playing bar top blackjack aren’t paying for their drinks. You look at the machine: it’s Game King BJ, $1 denomination.

You figure you might as well gamble the $15 and get a “free” drink, hoping to win, break even, or lose less than $15. At least there’s a chance of coming out better than you would if you just gave up the $15 without trying, right?

Now, these bar top BJ machines are usually terrible for the player, with a casino house edge of around 5 percent on average. Against a 5% house edge, if you play correctly and bet in $1 increments, you expect to lose just $0.05 a hand in the long run.

As long as you play fewer than 300 hands per $15 drink, this is a money-saving venture. You may not realize it, but this is an advantage play.